GlowLink

GlowLink Glowing Sky-Blue
GlowLink Glowing Purple
Testing with one RGB LED
Connected the ESP8266 (Link) to Glow the LEDs
All the components

Inspiration

The hardware themed hackathon and one of it's prize track inspired us to develop this hardware hack.

What it does

It is a simple WiFi controlled RGB LED that connects to your home network and can be controlled via a desktop app that is built using QT and socket programming. It also has the capabilities of OTA updates so we can anytime update the firmware inside it without the need of removing the ESP8266 from the Glowlink Device.

How we Built It

To build the hardware we used the ESP8266 a wifi microcontroller, 50 WS2812 RGB LEDs, LM371 voltage regulator to power the ESP8266 and a USB to UART to upload the OTA enabled Sketch for the first time. The LEDs are power hungry and to power it we used a high current 5V 3A DC Source.

To build the desktop app we used QT Creator.

Challenges

The OTA was failing quite a few times due to the power brusts it was taking while the programming was happening... However we figured that out quite late and fixed it by adding a bypass capacitor in the voltage lines.